AVON LAKE - Jack Fink of Avon Lake, placed third in the Lorain County Spelling Bee. Out of 65 students participating in the fifth and sixth grade level in the bee, Jack beat out all the other fifth graders. There were only two sixth graders that placed ahead of him.

Debbie Hunt, projects coordinator at the Educational Service Center of Lorain County, said students from all over Lorain County participated. "This year we had the largest number of students," she said.

Fifty-seven third and fourth graders went 10 rounds in their bee on May 4, while the fifth and sixth graders went 12 rounds on May 11. Both bees were held at Midview Middle School in Grafton.

Trophies were awarded for first, second and third place. Fifth and sixth grade winners were: Joe Formholtz, grade 6, first place, from South Amherst Middle School Firelands, Elijah Carrion, grade 6, second place, from Sterling Middle School in Clearview, and Jack Fink, grade 5, third place, from Troy Intermediate School in Avon Lake.

In the third and fourth grade level, first place went to Justin Kosco, grade 4, second place was Brooklynn Lane, grade 3. Both Kosco and Lane attend St. Peter School in Lorain. Third place went to Emory Fedor, grade 3, from Keystone Elementary School in LaGrange.

Judges for the bee included three administrators from the Educational Service Center: Debbie Greszler, Roger Sero and Jody Weidrick. The "pronouncer" was Bruce Van Dyke from WEOL radio.

Hunt said, "Students start preparing for the bee in December and then receive information in January, including a list of words." She said the words are not easy and recalled some examples of words that were missed such as marooned, bludgeon, cajole, outrageous and gnarled.

The audience swelled to a total of about 200 people for the two bees--mostly parents and grandparents, according to Hunt.

In a day of shorthand text messages and email with spelling and grammar clearly not a priority for modern methods of communication, Hunt said there are other benefits to bee participation.

"Kids get out of their social ineptness by talking in front of their peer instead of standing in a corner texting," she said. "The experience brings them out of shyness and helps them gain self-confidence. In my opinion, these are the kids who will excel in college. The bee is a very positive thing to help them read and write correctly."

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